February 12 marks
the one-year anniversary of the murder of Larry King,
an eighth-grade student at E.O. Greene Middle School in
Oxnard, Calif., who was shot in the back of the head,
in class, by another eighth-grader named Brandon
McInerney.
Every tragedy,
every act of violence is complicated in its detail. This
school shooting, and the circumstances that led to it,
raised a host of issues -- whether Brandon will be
tried as an adult under California's Hate Crimes Law;
how adults in contact with Larry and Brendan responded,
or should have responded, to signs of trouble in each of
these young lives; how easily minors in this country
have access to guns; and why young people resort to
violence as a response to conflict.
In the midst of
all the questions, however, one simple fact remains. In
the wake of teasing from friends about flirtatious comments
Larry made to him, Brendan shot Larry in the back of
the head at point blank range. And, from now on,
February 14 will always have a different resonance for
anyone affected by this event. Larry was taken off life
support and died on Valentine’s Day.
For advocates
working to end the bias, bullying and harassment directed
at lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students in
our schools, the murder of Larry King was the
nightmare scenario come to pass. For years, GLSEN has
sought to alert educators and the public to the daily
reality of anti-gay language and harassment in our schools,
and to the potential for this pervasive denigration to
lead to more serious acts of violence. Nearly 75% of
high school students report hearing “faggot”
or “dyke” frequently or often at school.
More than one in five LGBT students has been assaulted
at school. One in five….
There is
undoubtedly a continuum along which casual name-calling
leads to violence. But there is little to stop
behavior from moving across this continuum if
concerned adults do not respond clearly, unequivocally and
immediately to all forms of name-calling, bullying and
harassment that they witness. Unfortunately, research
shows that they generally do not. In a recent survey
of LGBT students, a disturbing 82.4% reported that
staff intervened only some of the time or never when
homophobic comments were made in their presence.
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Eliza Byard is
the executive director of GLSEN. This article is
representative of the author's views and not those of
Advocate.com.